


Mutants

by spnfanatic



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Dean Winchester Has Powers, Mutants, Post Season 1, Sam Winchester Has Powers, Tagging as I go, alternate universe after season 1, super powers
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-10-17
Updated: 2018-10-17
Packaged: 2019-08-03 08:17:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,212
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16322591
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spnfanatic/pseuds/spnfanatic
Summary: Inspired by the TV show ‘The Gifted’. Post season 1. It was supposed to be just another stupid hunt. A witch luring young, naive girls to sacrifice for a ritual to summon a demon. Sounded messy and gruesome but honestly? Nothing the Winchester brothers couldn’t handle...maybe.





	Mutants

Chapter One: Sam

 

Lately, Sam had a lot on his mind. The headaches, along with the flashes of visions, came more frequently. Often times, Sam would find himself waking in the middle of the night, breathing harshly, sweat dripping down his forehead to drench his already sweat soaked shirt. He had given up pretending the visions were nightmares, especially when he had real nightmares as well. Sometimes he would shout himself awake and he would find Dean sitting next to him, worried and too scared to touch Sam as if he were made of glass and he didn’t want to shatter him. It was just a few weeks since the crash and Dad’s death, when Dean decided it was time to get back to at least semi normal again.

Sam wasn’t sure if they were ready to go back to hunting so soon but Dean insisted it was fine. It was just a small hunt to ease back into the routine. Sam sighed, exasperated by Dean’s persistence. He didn’t think it would be too bad an idea in any other circumstances, but as it was Dean had been a stoic wall the past month since Dad’s death. He comforted Sam through his nightmares but Sam had no idea of Dean’s own mental state. All he managed to get out of his brother was his trademark grin and, “Don’t worry about me, Sammy. I’m fine. You’re not, so just keep on recovering, OK?”

Sam grumbled and only dropped it when Dean looked like he wouldn’t budge on his stance. Dean was one stubborn son of a…

“...Sam, bro, you there?” Sam paused in his thoughts, turning his head to see a concerned Dean watching him like a hawk. He sighed. Sometimes he wondered why his brother was still with him. He was just holding Dean back. “Dude, what was I saying the past five minutes?”

“Something about a case,” Sam murmured. At Dean’s stare, Sam continued, “Look, sorry...I’m just a little tired this morning.”

Dean didn’t look too happy but Sam didn’t offer any more, a hand brushing over his hair. “That’s an understatement,” Dean remarked. “Anyways as I was saying. I’ve got a tidbit from Bobby. There’s been three murders in the past month in a town not so far away from here that might be up our alley.”

Sam frowned as the new information slowly sunk in. Dean watched him for a moment before handing him a small case file. Sam picked through the clipped out news articles of three young girls found gruesomely murdered. He looked up at Dean after reading the articles, “You really think this is ours?” Sam wanted to remain skeptical even when all the signs pointed to a ritual. There were a couple candles that he could see in the pictures. Obscure drawings on the floor and walls. It could be a ritual to summon a demon or pagan god. It could also be some crazy occult thing that was done by some non supernatural human for a non supernatural cause. Sam would have to look further into it to be sure.

Dean also knew that. “What would it hurt to make sure it isn’t ours?” Dean pressed. Sam could tell his brother was itching for a hunt. Sitting around waiting was probably slowly killing him. “Come on, Sammy. It’ll be easy. Just a little sleuthing, that’s all. We’ll be in and out in no time. Promise.”

Sam caved at the sound of his childhood nickname. It was the first time since Dad’s death that Dean called him that. “Fine,” Sam said grudgingly. Dean’s eyes lit up at the prospect of a hunt and Sam tried and failed to contain a small smile at that. It was good to see his brother genuinely smile again.

Dean had been right after all. The simple hunt turned out not to be as simple as they first thought. They spent a few days in a small, backwater town that turned out to be hosting a witch. He had been luring young, naive girls to their gruesome deaths for a ritual to summon a powerful demon. He didn’t get the chance to complete it of course. There was no way Sam was going to let that son of a bitch kill the last girl needed. It was easy to trace the witch to a warehouse on the outskirts of town. Surprisingly it was Dean that warned Sam it could be a trap, but Sam at that point, didn’t think too much of it. He didn’t care. He just wanted to get the girl out safely and bring the witch to justice.

The door was locked, of course, when Sam tried to turn it. He grabbed the crowbar out of the trunk and proceeded to try and wrench the door open. It took a few minutes with Dean’s help before they were able to barrel through. Sam paused for a second, making out the familiarity of the warehouse. He had seen this place the night prior in a dream, a vision. 

There were sigils carved into the walls, candles lit everywhere. Sam could see dried blood on the floor. He looked behind him to his brother. Dean looked equally uneasy for a moment before straightening his shoulders and taking a step forward so he was right next to Sam. Sam looked in front of him. There was a circle drawn in the middle, the body of a high school aged girl lying in the center of it. She wore a skirt that barely covered her thighs. The top of her shirt was half way off so that Sam could barely make out her white bra underneath. He hurried over to her, not caring when his brother called out to him to wait, not caring it could all be a trap and he was falling right in it. Sam’s vision flashed into the front of his mind. Blood everywhere, a demon with yellow eyes smirking at him as he cut the girl in front of him. Sam being frozen in place, both by fear and by some unseen force as he tried to reach out to her, to do something. He almost stopped when the vision flashed into another. 

This time Sam could see a girl on the ceiling, her mouth open in a silent scream, fire bursting out of her body, eventually engulfing her entire being. Jessica’s death was on Sam’s hands and there was nothing he could do about it. Sam pushed forward, even as the vision left him mentally reeling. He could hear Dean right behind him.

In seconds, the young girl was in Sam’s arms. She lay still for all of a minute before her eyes shot open and she began to flail in Sam’s grasp, even with her hands tied behind her back. She was disoriented and scared and Sam was almost certain the girl thought he was her captor. “Hey, hey, calm down. We’re here to rescue you,” Sam said, trying to calm her down but she was determined to get free from him. She wriggled like a fish as he tried to pin her down, thankful for the gag in her mouth as she tried to shout and bite. “Stop fighting me,” Sam said, finally rolling her over so she was lying on her stomach. She stilled for a moment as Sam worked to untie her.

Sam was too busy freeing the teenage girl that he didn’t notice the silence in the warehouse. The girl looked at him with a forlorn expression. “I’m sorry,” she said. She started to cry as Sam, perplexed, looked around for his brother. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry.”

“Dean?” Sam’s voice echoed through the empty warehouse. Dean had been right there, right next to him. Sam was so sure.

When Sam turned back around to question the girl, he couldn’t find her either. She was gone. Sam was alone.

Sam wasn’t used to being alone. His whole life, he had been surrounded by people. He always had Dad and Dean growing up. He had teachers and friends, Jessica, when he went to Stanford. Sam had never been truly alone. Never. But now, a week since Dean had disappeared from the warehouse, Sam was alone...and lost. 

The first few days, Sam looked all over town, retraced his steps, even tried to find that high school girl again. No luck. No one knew where Dean had gone. No one knew who the girl Sam had rescued even was. Like she didn’t exist at all. Sam suspected the witch had fled the same day they went to rescue the girl. He was almost positive at this point the whole thing had been a trap to lure the Winchester brothers in. He just didn’t know why.

It took Sam another week of searching fruitlessly for Dean before giving into the idea that he couldn’t do this by himself. He didn’t want to anyways, if he was being totally truthful to himself. He called up Bobby, even though some part of him, deep down blamed Bobby for this. He tried not to show it but when Bobby answered the door, Sam knew he had failed. 

Sam was rummaging through Bobby’s old books when Bobby went over to the study with two plates of food. Sam had dark circles under his eyes, like he hadn’t slept the past week, which probably wasn’t far from the truth. Bobby was having trouble sleeping these days too. Nevertheless, Sam Winchester, wasn’t exactly in any state to go wandering off for his brother. Bobby set the plate on the table and waited for Sam to look up. It took a moment but even Bobby could see how hungry the youngest Winchester really was. He was pretty damn sure the kid hadn’t even had breakfast and it was pushing four in the afternoon.

Sam put the book down and thanked Bobby before plowing through the rice and chicken. It was probably a crap load better than all the fast food the brothers had been eating since they started hunting. Bobby sat down in front of his own plate. Sam wasn’t much of a talker these days but who could blame the kid? Still Bobby was secretly grateful for the company. He didn’t notice how lonely he really was until the Winchesters came to him after John’s death and then promptly left to follow the hunt Bobby had reluctantly gave to Dean. The kid had been sulking and miserable Bobby really did think he was doing the boys a favor. Dean didn’t seem happy until he was given something to do. The kid just loved hunting too damn much.

It was probably another month in when Sam managed to find his first clue to the whereabouts of his brother. Bobby said another hunter had been investigating something funky in a town in Colorado. The town had been having massive power outages for the past couple weeks and when Bobby had asked, just offhandedly, if he had seen the elder Winchester brother, the hunter gave a short pause before asking for a description. The town had drawn a couple of hunters for various reasons. Bobby passed along a brief description of Dean and the hunter said he may have seen a guy that sounded vaguely like that in passing.

Sam jumped on the chance and made his way to Colorado in the Impala. He was pretty damn sure if he reunited with Dean in Colorado, Dean would want his precious car back. He left everything, like the old cassettes that Sam loved to make fun of Dean for, untouched. His brother would kill him if he messed with anything.

It turned out to be a dead end. 

Whoever the hunter had seen was gone now, although while in town for a couple days, Sam learned that not only had the power outages been happening for almost a month now, some people were developing strange powers. At first Sam thought he found a town full of psychics like him, but it went beyond just visions. He learned that the pastor’s young boy had been healing birds, dogs, cats, any stray animal that came close to the church. Then one day a young woman that looked beaten and abused came to stay. The pastor had insisted on a hospital but his son walked forward, completely ignoring his dad’s calls for him to stop, as if he were in a deep trance and healed the woman. Sam didn’t believe it at first but then he witnessed the boy heal a man that had cuts and wounds all over his face. In seconds it was all gone.

Sam didn’t understand what he was seeing, but it couldn't be good. In the Winchester’s world, nothing good came without a price, after all.

The outages were finally found to be the works of an enraged man abusing his wife. In his anger, his house lost power, then a couple of his neighbors’...it kept going until the whole town was drained of power. Sam was sure the neighbors knew about the domestic violence, yet no one did anything. He watched as one of the hunters wrestled the motherfucker off the wife. Sam was pretty sure, at this point, the man possessed inhuman strength. The other hunter struggled to hold the man in his grasp before he was slammed to the floor with a sickening craaack. Sam didn’t wait any longer. His gun was out in seconds and he pulled the trigger without any hesitation. There was a deafening sound and the bullet went through the guy’s chest, blood gushing out. The guy screamed in pain and Sam put another bullet in him when he struggled to get up again, rage fueling adrenaline. Sam tried not to dwell on the fact he just killed a human. It was self defense after all. And the guy was a monster, even if he didn’t look like one. Not all monsters looked like actual monsters.

He learned that the hunter he saved that day was friends with Bobby. “I would say it was nice to meet you, but I can definitely think of nicer ways to meet,” the hunter said after he was helped up, “My name’s Rufus.”

“Sam,” Sam said. He was still in shock of the events that took place.

Rufus grinned, “Sam...Sam Winchester. I know you. Bobby told me about you and your brother.”

Sam found a hunting partner in Rufus. It wasn’t that he tried to replace his brother with someone else, Sam just realized he wasn’t made to hunt alone. He wasn’t sure his dad did it, or how Dean did it when Sam was off in college. He couldn’t comprehend how they could take the lonely roads, talking with people with a fake smile that never reached their eyes. Then again Dad was tough, tougher than both Sam and Dean would ever hope to be. And his brother tried so damn hard to emulate that. He tried so hard and failed, eventually pulling Sam Winchester back into the hunt when Dad went missing. And now he was dead and Dean was missing. All in a year.

“You OK there, kid?” Rufus was fiddling with the cassettes in the Impala.

Sam tried not to snap at him to leave it alone. He took a deep breath instead. He had been hunting with Rufus on and off for almost six months now. It wasn’t the same, never would be, but Sam needed someone. Rufus took to calling Sam ‘kid’ a week in and Sam didn’t bother to correct him so long as it wasn’t ‘Sammy’. No one called Sam ‘Sammy’ except one person and that person wasn’t here.

“Yeah. Im fine,” Sam said. “You sure this is the right way?”

Rufus nodded, tapping at his book. “Remember that last town in Colorado? Bobby and I did some digging and it turns out that wasn’t the only place to have some weird stuff show up. Arizona just showed up on the radar a few days ago when a school exploded out of nowhere. Luckily, there wasn’t any deaths. It made it to national news though. There were no signs of a bomb or a shoot-down or anything. Nothing whatsoever before that.”

“Just a random explosion?” Sam asked, brows furrowing. “Maybe something happened with the wiring or…”

Rufus cut him off, “Nope. Nada. Not a single trace of anything. And it’s all anyone on the news channels can talk about.”

Sam eyed Rufus out of the corner of his eye. “You really think someone’s got powers enough to explode a whole school?”

“You were there with me in Colorado. You tell me,” Rufus said with a shrug.

Sam gripped the steering wheel. “Yeah. True.”

They reached Arizona in a day. It was just as Rufus suspected and Sam had feared. A kid exploded the school just using his mind. People really were developing powers all over the country. Sam couldn’t kill a kid though. Rufus tried to talk with the kid first but the kid didn’t want to talk. He was hurting too much. He couldn’t control his powers either. Sam couldn’t do it this time. There was no domestic violence or evil this time. It was just a boy that had no idea what was happening to him, just as freaked out as Sam. But he was going to hurt a lot of people unintentionally if Rufus couldn’t get through to the kid.

He remembered being just as terrified and freaked out, possibly ashamed when he was a kid, when he realized there was no possible way for him to live a normal life because...Sam was no normal kid. He was a psychic. He had a demon that had been chasing him for the past year. His dad was dead and his mom and girlfriend had been burned alive, and now his brother had been missing for almost a year too. Sam was a complete freak. Just like this kid and his impossible fire powers.

The kid’s sudden shriek threw Sam out of his thoughts and into the present. The kid was holding Rufus by the neck. By the way Rufus was struggling to breathe, Sam knew he didn’t have much time. He stupidly dropped his gun, rushing forward in a desperate attempt to reach Rufus before it was too late. The kid looked at him and a large gust of wind pushed him back to the other side of the room. His head banged hard against the wall and Sam tried to get back up. An explosion of fire caught the trashcan next to him and Sam fell back in anguish. He felt a searing heat against his leg and he cried out in pain. Sam slumped back down against the wall, one eye blearily watched as the kid threw Rufus to the other corner of the room. He crumpled in an unresponsive pile on the floor and Sam still tried to call out to him.

Before he closed his eyes, he saw a man walk into the room. Sam wasn’t sure who it was at first, but then the man turned around and said, “Go to sleep, Sam.”

And Sam went to sleep.


End file.
